Exploration of how the dramatic use of accents and dialects in English speech informs and complicates discourse on race and ethnicity. How the function of identity in drama and performance distinguishes between the concepts of race and ethnicity. Some observations on recent contributions to the study of accents and dialects as elements of the fields of both linguistics and performance studies. The relationship of "theatre practices" to "social realities" as evidenced in the performance of a wide-ranging variety of English dialects.